Duna Aszfalt's Home Orders Fell 60% in a Year. Hungary's Biggest Road Builder Is Buying Its Way Across Four Countries

A contractor that dominates its home market usually grows at home. Duna Aszfalt is doing the reverse. In the 12 months to June 2025, the Hungarian road builder's new orders fell 60% year on year to HUF 235bn, with a single major contract — the M1 motorway expansion — signed in the whole period. Its answer was not to wait for the domestic pipeline to recover. It went shopping across the border.

The number behind the strategy

Scope Ratings put hard figures on a shift that had been building for two years. In its issuer report dated 10 September 2025, which affirmed Duna at BB- with a Stable outlook, the agency flagged that the collapse in intake had pushed the book-to-bill ratio below 1.0x, down from 1.9x a year earlier. In plain terms, Duna is now delivering work faster than it is winning replacement work.

The headline backlog still looks comfortable. Consolidated order books stood at HUF 1,200bn as at June 2025, up from HUF 800bn, equal to 3.3 times average annual revenue. That buys roughly three years of visibility. But backlog is a lagging comfort; intake is the leading signal, and it turned down first. On 29 June 2026 Duna published its consolidated FY2025 accounts, the first full year presenting the business as a multi-country group rather than a Hungarian one.

The road builder that bought its neighbours

The buying spree started in Poland. In the third quarter of 2024 Duna acquired Mota-Engil Central Europe, a top-20 Polish motorway contractor with more than 800 staff, since rebranded Duna Polska. That single deal lifted non-domestic revenue to around 20% and raised pro-forma consolidated revenue to HUF 359bn. In May 2025 came two bolt-ons: Euro Strada in Romania (HUF 23bn of 2024 revenue) and VALCANO in the Czech Republic (HUF 8bn). In Slovakia, Duna sits in a consortium with Váhostav and Metrostav DS building a 5.3km section of the D3 motorway near Čadca for EUR 230m, including a 600m tunnel.

The rationale is structural. Hungary built out most of its motorway network over two decades, and the domestic market has turned. National construction output fell 0.4% in 2024 and investment volume dropped 15%, even as public procurement volumes rose. For a builder whose home programme is largely finished, growth has to come from somewhere else.

The African wildcard

The boldest bet is not in Central Europe at all. Through GED Africa, a 25-year public-private partnership, Duna is building a 184km highway and a 345m cable-stayed bridge linking the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia, with France's Egis as operator. To fund it, the group planned a USD 400m senior secured bond, roughly HUF 156bn, with an 80% principal guarantee, and targets first tolls in May 2027. Scope was blunt about the risk: sovereign transfer and convertibility exposure in two frontier markets, and no operating cash flow in the forecast horizon. The quiet CEE road builder's single largest project exposure is African project finance.

Why diversify now

Two clouds hang over the home model. Brussels has escalated legal action over the 35-year expressway concession linked to Duna's owner, László Szíjj, and to Lőrinc Mészáros, arguing it breached EU procurement and concession rules. Separately, changes to Hungary's public procurement law, sought as a condition of releasing EU funds, could sharpen competition in the tenders Duna has long won. Around 80% of the group's order book is tied to public contracts, state tenders make up roughly 75% of the backlog, and 79% to 81% of revenue is still Hungarian. Against that concentration, buying cash-flowing backlog in four other countries is less an expansion than an insurance policy.

What it signals

The trade has a price. Duna is buying lower-margin peers, and Scope expects group profitability to drift from around 21% toward 14% as Poland and the bolt-ons dilute the mix, with integration and African execution adding volatility. For the rest of Central and Eastern Europe's state-linked construction champions, Duna is a template worth studying: when your order book sits one election or one Brussels ruling away from freezing, buying backlog abroad is cheaper than waiting for the domestic pipeline to thaw. The number to watch is not the reassuring HUF 1,200bn backlog. It is the order intake behind it.